On Realizing that My Life is Like a Cancelled ABC Drama

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Circa 2006, Taye Diggs starred in Daybreak, a drama about a man who was stuck repeating the same day over and over. I enjoyed that show, and was probably the only who did as it was cancelled quicker than you can say whippersnapper. It seems boring to have to repeat the same events in each episode over and over, but it wasn’t. Each day, he grew more cognizant of the difficulties that would face him the next time around. Every time he made a different choice, said a different thing, the outcome for that day changed. But, the more he did things differently, the more things stayed the same for him.

It struck me today as I headed home, that my life, much like that of Taye Digg’s character, is stuck in repeat.

The more that everyone else around me changes: get old, die, marry, have children, overdose on drugs or happiness- the more I stay the same. I mean, people have a hard time believing that I am almost thirty, instead mistaking me for 23 or 25-year-old. And then, there’s the issue of de ja vu. I have come to the weird realization too many times to mention as of late, that I have been in similar situations throughout my life. You can feel the same anguish, fall into the same despair or even laugh the same crooked laughter but so many times.

So yes, the world around me is changing. People around me are changing, moving in and out of my life. But, I remain constant. And after a while, remaining constant starts to feel like going backwards , not in a cool time machine kind of way, but in an utterly hopelessly stagnant kind of way.

The soundtrack of my life?… who knew all it took was a Google search

It’s something that’s hard to vocalize, and even harder to codify; My cold reality is that no one on this earth really understands the thoughts and feelings that I am trying to convey. Maybe that just comes with the territory. After all, like this post, I mince my words with the right mixture of opaqueness and candidness, just enough to leave everyone, including myself confused.

In yet another session of trying to explain my mental, spiritual, emotional, physical (insert any other sphere of life here) plateau to a friend, I just gave up. “The fact of the matter is,” I told her “My life is probably better than what I think it is, but it’s also a whole lot worse than what other people think it is.” And that, I guess is true for many. Only the person wearing the shoe knows that it rubs against the pinky toe in the most abrasive way, or that it cuts into the leg at the top part of the heel.

Overall, I’ve just given up. Yes, given up on everything. Maybe this is what would have become of Taye Digg’s show- maybe he just wakes up one morning and says “You know what, F—this sh—-” and then rolls over and goes back to sleep. It’s like when you were a kid and thought it would be cool to run upward on an escalator that’s headed down, rarely does it end with the result that you’re gunning for, at least that’s how it always worked out for me: over, and over and over again.

Sometimes, My life feels like this…

So yeah, my life is like a cancelled ABC drama. I didn’t know where else to make this declaration because, to be honest there is no one in particular that I can tell this kind of thing to. Everyone I know either won’t understand, has too much on their plate so I can’t add the burden of knowledge of this amorphous thing that I carry around, or just doesn’t give a damn.

And yes, I count my blessings (if only life were as simple as preschool Bible song). I am grateful, but I’m not content. Yes, I’m not someone who is being trafficked, I don’t have to cross landmines to get to fresh drinking water and I wasn’t married off at the age of 12. But my problems are not first world problems (not purely). But I can’t help it if my pain is pain too- if I touch, see, taste and smell it every day… on repeat.

They Say that if you left it all out, you’ll feel better…

So here I am, crying out, not literally (well not all the time) but mentally, or perhaps physiologically. Maybe if I get these thoughts down now, I can wake up tomorrow, and find something new.

But how can that happen? You know, the other effect of the show being cancelled in its first season, is that so much was left unanswered. While we did find out who was responsible for his never ending day, we will never know why Taye Diggs had to live life in repeat.

I’m writing this down with the hope that someday, five years or so from now, when I come back to read this entry on my probably defunct blog, I will be able to recollect how I feel but not feel how I feel.

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2 thoughts on “On Realizing that My Life is Like a Cancelled ABC Drama”

If life is life, probably in five years you will read but not be able to feel what you are right now, which, clear or obfuscated descriptions of your feelings and what is going on in your life, sounds like despair. I’m sorry you’re in this place. I’ve been here before. A lot of what you say sounds familiar…that life isn’t horrible, but it isn’t good. Seeing people around you move on…in career, love and life, that no one else understands, giving up…all of those things. As one of the many Brazilian pop songs I use to define my life says (this one from the 60s): “There are days that we people feel like someone who departed or died. We have stagnated suddenly, or was it, perhaps, that our world grew.” There were several times in my education where I felt that stagnating feeling, and I am bound to feel it again. Don’t fret too much, although it’s an uncomfortable place, I know…through your own action, taking a chance with something within the realms I mentioned above, life, love, career…or through the sheer force of life as we know it, stagnancy will not be status quo.

Yeah, I hope so… something tells me that much of life is like this… there is always someone in a worse situation, and so many others in a better one… perspective is hard to maintain. But, as I have become prone to saying these days… Rabna Kareem. Here’s hoping to a week where my life is moving forward and not standing still.